Sending HTTP Post Request with Android

I've been trying to learn from tons of examples on

SO

and other sites, but I can't figure out why the example I've hacked together isn't working. I'm building a small proof-of-concept app that recognizes speech and sends it (the text) as a POST request to a

node.js

server. The speech recognition I have confirmed to work and the server is receiving connections from a regular browser visit, so I'm led to believe that the issue is in the app itself. Am I missing something small and stupid? No errors are being thrown but the server is never recognizing a connection. Thanks in advance for any advice or help.